“There are strange things done in the midnight sun:” The Inuit are complaining that there are too many polar bears in Nunavut, and climate change hasn’t yet affected any of them, or so says a draft management plan from the Canadian territorial government that contradicts conventional scientific thinking.

The proposed plan says that growing bear numbers are increasingly jeopardizing public safety, and it’s high time that Inuit knowledge drove management policy instead of the other way around. We have the bureaucracy problem down here too. Bureaucrats safe in comfortable offices far away from the specifics they are regulating don’t respect local knowledge. Rather like Hillary, referring to a majority of the people in the center of the country as “deplorables”—bureaucrats are apt to think they have more degrees and are thus smarter than the locals they are regulating. Polar bears killed two Inuit last summer.

The plan leans heavily on Inuit knowledge, which yields population estimates higher than those suggested by western science for almost all of the 13 included bear populations.

Scientists say only one population of bears is growing; Inuit say there are nine. Environment Canada says four populations are shrinking; Inuit say none are.

The proposed plan downplays one of the scientific community’s main concerns.

“Although there is growing scientific evidence linking the impacts of climate change to reduced body condition of bears and projections of population declines, no declines have currently been attributed to climate change,” it says. “(Inuit knowledge) acknowledges that polar bears are exposed to the effects of climate change, but suggests that they are adaptable.”

Susan Crockford is the wildlife biologist who is expert on polar bears and issues an annual report. Her 2017 report is here.

The environmental activists who run around in polar bear suits at venues where they can expect press attention can’t be bothered to study up on the polar bear situation, nor can the mainstream media. Nor, apparently does Tom Steyer, billionaire climate activist and true believer who is running around the country trying to convince people about the “need to impeach” President Trump for denying imminent global warming. It has been a warm year in Central Europe so far this year, but it is not due to global warming, the globe has been cooling off, or at least not warming at all. This is the third year in a row that the globe has cooled off from it’s El Nino high in 2015. Arctic ice has stabilized over the past 10 years and this year the Northwest Passage was closed the entire year. The Hudson Bay freeze up has come earlier than average. They even had snow in Texas. There are currently fewer sunspots on the sun.

A Max Planck Institute Climate Modeler has said that we have a 10 year reprieve, earlier climate models were too sensitive. And so it goes. Panic and reprieve. Facts are so troublesome.

Mark Morano of Climate Depot has a Facebook video about his recent book debunking the climate alarmists like Al Gore and Tom Steyer.

California Governor Jerry Brown has said that “hundreds of billions” of dollars could be needed to adapt to man-made global warming in “the span of a few years” The Democrat added that “And it’s not millions, it’s billions and tens and probably hundreds of billions even in the span of a few years. We’ve got lots of work to do.”

California does have a “Climate Adaption Strategy” that is supposed to reduce the vulnerability of populations to the effects of future global warming like higher sea levels, more intense storms and more crop failures.

President Donald Trump said he’d pull federal funding if California did not “remedy” its wildfire problems, which Trump blamed for poor forest management practices for large wildfires.

Brown did mention that better forest management was necessary to getting fires under control, but then went on to say “those who deny” man-made global warming were “definitely contributing” to the deadly wildfires.

“Unfortunately, the best science is telling us that the dryness, warmth drought — all those thing, they’re going to intensify,” Brown said. “Predictions by some science are, we’ve already gone up by one degree. I think we can expect half a degree, which is catastrophic, over the next 10 to 12 years. We have a real challenge here threatening our whole way of life, so we got to pull together.”

Lefty billionaire Tom Steyer said the President Trump’s skepticism on climate change is grounds for impeachment during an appearance on CNN this weekend.

The fires in California have been horrific, with way too much loss of life and homes destroyed. Photographs of the fires from space really demonstrated how huge the fires were.

A long time resident of, I believe, the Carr Fire area in Redding, wrote that his community used to take down timber too close to the town, and tried to eliminate brush that came too close to areas where there were homes and buildings. However environmentalists demanded that residents apply for permission to cut down trees, and demanded that the woods and brush be preserved to protect the wildlife. He didn’t include the name of the town in his post, but that sounds very probable to me.

It seems unbelievable that the governor of a state where forest fire can be a major problem, and a billionaire out advocating around the country for the impeachment of the president cannot make the effort to study up a little on the science, before they shoot off their mouths.

Hurricanes and tornadoes are not caused by global warming. The Earth has been warming and cooling for millions of years. The slight rise in the amount of carbon dioxide (CO²) in the atmosphere has been a great benefit to mankind, as it is a natural fertilizer for plants. It makes food crops in the world grow a little better and feed more hungry people. CO² is what we exhale each time we breathe in air, use the oxygen, and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants and trees use the carbon dioxide for fertilizer and release oxygen. You are supposed to have learned about photosynthesis in high school. Greenhouses pump extra CO² into their greenhouses because they are in the business of growing big healthy plants. They may have as much as 1,000 ppm in the greenhouses. No sign of dead nurserymen.

Recent studies have noted that throughout the Pacific, the ocean is not rising around islands and atolls. Many of the climate thermometer stations have been badly located next to air-conditioning outlets or reflective concrete walls, on airport pavements and consequently their recorded temperatures are way too high. Many of the climate estimates come from computer programs that started with the kind of program that estimated stock market movement. They put in what agreed upon facts they knew, a lot of things they hoped were correct, and a lot of guesswork for all the things we don’t understand – like the action of clouds.

There seem to be a lot of true believers out there, who don’t read any science but simply accept as holy writ whatever is said by climate alarmists, without checking contrary opinion at all. I keep mentioning that Christiana Figueres, General Secretary of the IPCC, let the cat out of the bag a few years back when she admitted that the goal of climate alarmism was to eliminate Capitalism. Others have confirmed that.

The Arizona Attorney General, Mark Brnovich has filed a lawsuit against Tom Steyer and a renewable energy campaign Steyer supports for launching, what Brnovich claims is a defamatory campaign against him.

Filed on Wednesday, the lawsuit names Steyer and Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona as defendants. Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona — which has benefited from millions of dollars in donations from Steyer — is campaigning to require Arizona electric utility companies derive half their power from renewable energy sources by 2030. The ballot proposal is officially known as Proposition 127.

Brnovich’s lawsuit is in response to Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona’s campaign against him. The renewable energy group has aired attack ads against him, claiming he “bailed out” the state’s largest electric utility company by wording the Proposition 127 ballot language in a way, it argues, puts the proposal in a bad light.

Originally written by the Arizona Secretary of State’s office, Brnovich added language to the ballot measure that said utility companies would have to meet the renewable energy mandate “irrespective of cost” if the proposal passes.

The attorney general argues that his office has acted to word ballot language in a way that is most informatie to voters. Brnovich has maintained that the changes are “factually accurate.”

We always want to err on the side of giving voters as much information as possible, especially consumers, he told the Arizona Republic. “When you add a provision to the constitution that starts mandating that 50 percent of that energy has to come from different sources and non-nuclear sources, that will have an impact on the cost.”

Brnovich’s lawsuit is in response to the Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona’s campaign against him. The renewable energy group has aired attack ads against him, claiming that he “bailed out” the state’s largest electric utility compny by wording the Proposition 127 ballot measure language in a way that puts their proposal in a bad light. CEHA has aired attack ads calling Brnovich, who is running for reelection, “corrupt” and called openly for Arizona voters to boot him from office. This has happened in the wake of the renewable energy proposal lagging in the polls.

The battle over Proposition 127 has become the costliest ballot measure campaign in Arizona history with each side spending about $40 million. Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest electric utility is against the proposal and has funded the effort to defeat it.

Billionaire Tom Steyer has spent millions to push his favored renewable energy mandates. He seems to be a “true believer” in the horrors of global warming and has led similar campaigns in Michigan, Nevada and other states. “Renewable” energy, with the exception of nuclear energy and water power dams, remains mostly hogwash.

The wind does not blow steadily, but in puffs and wafts or else gales that are too much for a turbine. Solar energy is too diffuse. There are clouds and rain. Wind turbines kill birds at a disturbing rate, and solar arrays fry them. I don’t know if anyone has studied the effect on the local ecosystem when you are killing off all the birds. Neither wind nor solar can produce the energy required by a normal economy, which requires a steady source of energy that can be depended on.

Governor Jay Inslee’s clever carbon tax got national recognition today, as it was written up in the Wall Street Journal. The subhead reads: “The referendum shows the main goal isn’t reducing CO² emissions” What? What?

If Democrats retake Congress in November, a national carbon tax is likely to be part of their agenda. A referendum in Washington state next month is a test of public support. (my italics) It is correctly Initiative Measure No.1631 concerns pollution (cute tag line)

Two years ago nearly 60% of Washington voters rejected a ballot initiative to impose a “revenue neutral” carbon tax. Green groups opposed the referendum because it wouldn’t generate money for environmental largess. Businesses said it would destroy jobs and increase energy prices, which is true.

Democrats are very fond of taxes on things that make it sound like they are saving the Earth from the horrors of climate change. In California they used the proceeds from cap-and-trade revenue on their fabled bullet train to nowhere that is pauperizing much of California. Also funded low-income housing and public transit, and handouts for the greenies.

We already have the third highest gas prices in the country after Hawaii and California, so the tax would raise those only by 13 cents a gallon in 2020 and 59 cents a gallon by 2035, doesn’t sound too bad until you start out adding how many gallons it takes to fill up your car or cars. Since we rely heavily on electricity from our dams in the Columbia, electricity rates would rise more modestly.

The National Economic Research Associates analysis estimates that the tax would cost Washington households an average $440 in 2020, and would reduce the state’s economic growth by 0.4% over the next two years. So the referendum requires that 10% of revenues must be spent on reducing energy costs for low-income residents. That more or less admits that the cost will be significant, does it not. $50 million must go to support those who work in fossil fuels. Our refineries process crude from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale.

Some of the emissions would be exempt from the tax, including “energy-intensive trade-exposed” industries like aluminum production, agricultural diesel oil and fossil fuel — and fuel purchased by local and state governments. Can’t have a tax that costs the government union jobs. That suggests that all the state bureaucrats will get to fill up at the state’s free pumps, doesn’t it? See the post below for a rating of the nation’s governors. Jay Inslee comes in dead last, with a solid F.

The discredited IPCC is still babbling about a climate apocalypse, and estimates a global carbon price of between $135 and $5,500 per ton would be necessary to save us all. That’s not going to happen, but neither is the climate apocalypse. If you recall, Christiana Figueres, the General Secretary of the IPCC let the cat out of the bag a few years back when she admitted that the goal was not to save the planet, but to end Capitalism.

The Journal is more concerned that if the referendum passes, liberals will see a green light to pass carbon copies in other states. Here the whole deal is a thinly disguised grab for more revenue for the politicians in Olympia.

President Trump was asked by “60 Minutes” Leslie Stahl about Hurricane Florence: He said:

“I don’t know that it’s manmade. I will say this: I don’t want to give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don’t want to lose millions and millions of jobs.” … “I’m not denying climate change,” he said in the interview. “But it could very well go back. You know, we’re talking about over a … millions of years.”

“They say that we had hurricanes that were far worse than what we just had with Michael,” said Trump, who identified “they” as “people” after being pressed by “60 Minutes” correspondent Leslie Stahl. She asked, “What about the scientists who say it’s worse than ever?” the president replied, “You’d have to show me the scientists because they have a very big political agenda.

Well, you can imagine the outcry, Charles Schumer, distinguished Minority Leader of the United States Senate: “If we would do more on climate change, we’d have fewer of these hurricanes and other types of storms. Everyone knows that, except a few.” He added that The Trump administration has done nothing but “move the issue backward.” Sorry, Senator. The president was actually scientifically, politically, and economically correct. Hurricanes are a natural phenomenon, unrelated to climate change.

“There is no trend in either intensity or frequency of hurricane strikes over the last 118 years. They have nothing to do with so called climate change. Out of the top 10 warmest Gulf of Mexico years since 1860, 7 occurred before 1970, which is before we experienced any significant warming”, according to Dr. Roy Spencer.

“So, all the “experts” can do is make vague claims about how major hurricanes like Michael are what we can expect more of in a warming world, but the data show that – so far at least – the data do not support the theory.”

The damage from Michael and Florence has been extensive, and to see so many houses flattened or disappeared is simply tragic, and the victims have our deepest sympathy. Federal aid and food and water start flowing in as rapidly as possible.

The Earth has been warming and cooling for millions of years “Global Warming” refers to the global-average temperature increase that has been observed over the last one hundred years or more. But to many politicians and the public, the term carries the implication that mankind is responsible for that warning. This website describes evidence from my group’s government-funded research that suggests global warming is mostly natural, and that the climate system is quite insensitive to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol pollution.

Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming…it has simply been assumed that global warming is manmade. This assumption is rather easy for scientists since we do not have enough accurate global data for a long enough period of time to see whether there are natural warming mechanisms at work. …

But first let’s examine the basics of why so many scientists think global warming is manmade. Earth’s atmosphere contains natural greenhouse gases (mostly water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane) which act to keep the lower layers of the atmosphere warmer than they otherwise would be without those gases. Greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation — the radiant heat energy that the Earth naturally emits to outer space in response to solar heating. Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels (mostly coal, petroleum, and natural gas) releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and this is believed to be enhancing the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect. As of 2008, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 40% to 45% higher than it was before the start of the industrial revolution in the 1800’s. (Do read the whole thing, not long)

The President is visiting Florida and Georgia today, and the first responders and volunteers are working in a massive Federal response:

Here’s a look at that response, by the numbers:

A major on-the-ground operation: More than 16,000 Federal employees, including over 8,000 military personnel, have been deployed.

Search-and-rescue efforts underway: FEMA, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the National Guard are working alongside state responders and volunteers. As of this morning, they have completed 110 evacuations, 4,193 rescues/assists, 15,287 shelter-in-place checks, 128 animal assists, and 16,827 structural assessments.

Power restoration a top priority: More than 35,000 utility workers from 26 states are working to bring power back to impacted areas.

Food and water distribution: In Florida, FEMA has provided 715,000 meals and 1.5 million liters of water per day. FEMA has also transferred more than 350,000 meals to Georgia, and 30+ distribution sites are being supported.

The response to Hurricane Michael is continuing. Thousands of industry workers are restoring power and volunteers are serving hot meals and providing shelter and comfort. Over the weekend the president issued a major disaster declaration for Georgia, and additional disaster assistance for Florida. FEMA Disaster Survivor Assistance teams are knocking on door to help families register for assistance.The President has called for maximum relief. When asked about his biggest priority for the trip, he said “Just making sure everyone is safe and that they’re fed.”

The 2018 Annual GWPF Lecture
“Global Warming for the Two Cultures”8 October 2018Richard Lindzen

…..Over half a century ago, C.P. Snow (a novelist and English physical chemist) who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government famously examined the implications of “two cultures:”

…..A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold’ it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which id the scientific equivalent of :Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

…..I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question –such as. What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying Can you read? – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had.

…..I fear that little has changed since Snow’s assessment 60 years ago. While some might maintain that ignorance of physics does not impact political ability, it most certainly impacts the ability of non-scientists to deal with nominally science-based issues. The gap in understanding is also an invitation to malicious exploitation. Given the democratic necessity for non-scientists to take positions on scientific problems, belief and faith inevitably replace understanding, though trivially oversimplified false narratives serve to reassure the non-scientists that they are not totally without scientific ‘understanding.’ The issue of global warming offers numerous examples of all of this.

…..I would like to begin this lecture with an attempt to force the scientists in the audience to come to grips with the actual nature of the climate system, and to help the motivated non-scientists in this audience who may be in Snow’s ‘one in ten’ to move beyond the trivial oversimplifications.

It’s roughly 7 pages, admittedly a little long, but you will understand a lot more of the controversy and reality of the whole global warming issue. Unfortunately there are a lot of people in charge of states who don’t have a clue.

The more one reviews accuser Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, the worse it gets — as I expressed in the previous post. There’s the little girl “up-talk”— the last syllable at the end of a sentence goes higher in tone. It’s another little girl thing. She’s just so unsure, she needs help to recall, doesn’t name anyone who can verify her memories.

I cannot imagine how anyone who talks like that could be a professor at a university and at Stanford Medical School. Nobody would take her seriously. Yet she seems so wounded, that it’s easy for viewers to take her defenseless little girl pose as the plaintive plea of a wronged woman, and assume that she is credible.

She pretends that she doesn’t understand the questions, needing more time to reply. When we first heard from her, she didn’t really know who it was, only that someone got on top of her and put his hand over her mouth. Then she was suddenly absolutely clear that it was Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge. All four of her confirming witnesses did not confirm her story. At Breitbart, John Nolte explores the veracity of her testimony with devastating results.

Christina Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that she began having memories of her abuse returned when she and her husband put, at her demand, a second front door on their house. She said she had never told anyone about anything until May 2012 when she went to couples counseling.

In explaining why I wanted a second front door, I began to describe the assault in detail. I recall saying that the boy who assaulted me could someday be on the U.S. Supreme Court, and spoke a bit about his background at an elitist all-boys school in Bethesda, Maryland. My husband recalls that I named my attacker as Brett Kavanaugh.

The second front door was already installed by March 2011, perhaps earlier, and apparently installed as a door to an office where she had a private business called The Couples Resource Center.

According to information found on the Internet, a business was located at the exact same address as the Ford house (please note that the address of this house was released on the Internet weeks ago). The Couples Resource Center was located at the exact same location as the Ford’s home.

The “process” of memorializing Ford’s testimony involved a strange inversion of constitutional norms: The idea of a statute of limitations is ossified; hearsay is legitimate testimony; inexact and contradictory recall is proof of trauma, and therefore of validity; the burden of proof is on the accused, not the accuser; detail and evidence are subordinated to assumed sincerity; proof that one later relates an allegation to another is considered proof that the assault actually occurred in the manner alleged; motive is largely irrelevant; the accuser establishes the guidelines of the state’s investigation of the allegations; and the individual allegation gains credence by cosmic resonance with all other such similar allegations.

The descriptions of the house, what one can hear of people going up and downstairs , she contradicts herself. Supposedly her friend Leland drove her home, but Leland denies the whole thing, says she never encountered Kavanaugh at all, and has no knowledge of the party. Ford reports proudly of her polygraph, (her lawyers made her do it) and neither the lawyers nor herself as a practicing psychologist should be unaware of the limitations of polygraphs.

Brett Kavanaugh enjoys one of the most spotless reputations of anyone in American public life. He has been enthusiastically endorsed by those who have known him all his life–by girls he knew in high school and college, by judges he has served with, by professors and students and Harvard and Yale law schools, by judges who have worked with him, by his judicial clerks–most of whom have been women–by the American Bar Association, by sitting Supreme Court justices. In short, everyone who has ever known or dealt with Brett Kavanaugh endorses him.

I think that Judge Kavanaugh’s pristine reputation is one reason why the Democrats have unleashed against him a smear campaign unparalleled in American history. This is the message they are trying to send: If we can do this to the Boy Scout Brett Kavanaugh, we can do it to anyone. Are you thinking of serving in a Republican administration? Or accepting an appointment to the federal judiciary from a Republican president? Think twice, and then think again.

Nope, I don’t believe a word of it, including her claim that she was sexually abused. Her story just falls apart.